


oh Patrick Merrick we love you get up

by Lilliburlero



Category: The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick manages to put the tin hat on a surprisingly successful evening.</p><p>One version of what might have happened after the end of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5306789">'Regrets, otherwise engaged'</a>.</p><p>*</p><p>Note: wholly gratuitous Frank O'Hara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh Patrick Merrick we love you get up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fengirl88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/gifts).



It was just the sort of room―small, sloping and afterthoughtish―that Patrick might rather have enjoyed spending a night in, if he’d had it to himself. He would never, under normal circumstances, have dreamed of accepting a spontaneous invitation such as Giles had made earlier: after the ordeal of a party he needed a silent and preferably solitary journey home, a befuddled half-hour with a familiar book and a mug of strong, scalding tea, and his own bed; or if those conditions could not obtain, plenty of notice to accommodate himself to their absence. Of course, one unexpected outcome of his decision had been very satisfying indeed―he could not regret it―but now Nicola had gone to bed, he half wished himself on the frozen, torchlit trail back to Mariot Chase. He dropped his armful of sleeping-gubbins in the middle of the floor and looked around. He was not prepared to admit to anything as vulgar as curiosity, but it was undeniably interesting to observe the natural, albeit temporary, habitat of the eldest Marlow, if for no better or other reason than Giles was Nick’s favourite.

As one imagined it would be, the room was intimidatingly neat. A boarded-up fireplace occupied the thin end of its wedge, the mantel-shelf tightly packed with books: mostly technical tomes, but also _Whisky Galore_ , _The Riddle of the Sands_ , a couple of yellowing Ian Flemings, and an anomalous Victorian _Morte d’Arthur_. To the right of the window was a discommodious, chipped wardrobe that reminded Patrick of the one in his college room, and to the left of it a chest of drawers with a pair of silver-backed brushes, a sponge-bag and a bottle of Floris No. 89 on top. Against the opposite wall stood a wooden chair and a narrow iron-framed bed, the latter made with hospital precision. The dressing-gown hanging on the back of the door was a slightly fogeyish green and brown wool affair with a rope cord, but the indigo pyjamas folded crisply on the pillow were―Patrick almost extended a corroborating finger and thumb before checking himself in horror―silk. The door opened. 

‘Sorry we couldn’t make you more comfortable,’ Giles said, sitting on the chair to remove his shoes and socks. ‘The playroom ceiling fell in after those storms in October, and Mum, displaying her usual faultless logic, took that as her cue to redecorate a number of rooms with ceilings still very largely intact. So we’re all sardines, despite being short-handed.’ Standing up again, he pulled his Aran sweater over his head in a hectic, boyish fashion, exuding a faint scent of coal-tar soap, pipe tobacco and the sort of caustic tooth-powder that the latter rendered necessary. 

‘I was just thinking it was rather a cosy little billet. But if I’m in the way, I could go back down to the sitting-room.’ 

‘Not unless you want to fight Tessa for the sofa. You’d win, but then Nick―’ as Giles said his sister’s name, the cocoa that had taken about half an hour longer to make than it should have done seemed to occur to them both, and different corners of the room urgently to require intent regard, ‘―would kill you.’ 

‘Well―can’t have that,’ Patrick said foolishly, and turned his attention to shaking out mat, pillow and sleeping bag. Though he performed this operation with sedulous deliberation, it could not reasonably be prolonged much beyond two minutes. He straightened up to the sight of Giles Marlow’s shirtless back, which he should of course have expected, but somehow hadn’t. It was an enviable back, broad and muscular, retaining a vestige of tropical tan below a heavily weathered neck, tapering to a narrow waist. Patrick thought dismally of his own narrow, pale, featureless torso and was both glad for and ashamed of the vest under his polo-neck. 

‘Quite―’ Patrick cleared his throat, desperately in need of something to say. Giles paused in folding his shirt and glanced over his shoulder, blinking rather hard, ‘―a successful evening on the whole, I thought.’ The mortifying construction that might be put on these words occurred to him as soon as they were out of his mouth―but surely Giles couldn’t possibly think he would say that, meaning _that_ , about his sister―how did it feel to have a sister, anyway, and be sharing a room with a bloke who’d been kissing her, untucking her blouse and running his hands over her back and breasts while she, with surprising ardour, reached for his― _bloody hell, Merrick, stop it_. 

And given that Giles was saying, ‘Oh, okay as far as it went―’ rather than punching him, or whatever it was that brothers did, it appeared that Giles hadn’t. Patrick, realising he was still embarrassingly fully clothed, kicked off his shoes and started to wriggle out of his pullover. 

‘―but I absolutely can’t abide,’ Giles said, dropping his trousers, ‘seeing a female drunk like that. Luckily all my crowd―well, I expect Lawrie gets roaring with her NYT pals and behaves perfectly disgracefully, but I’ve never known her actually collapse.’ 

Patrick heard something echoed there, something he couldn’t quite place, a jazz song perhaps. (And, some weeks into the Lent term, when he finally identified it as he browsed a bookshelf belonging to a hip young Fellow of Caius, concluded it must, surely must, have been a coincidence.) Mysteriously emboldened as he unbuckled his belt, he said, ‘I remember Nick told me, that when she was quite a kid, and used to get seasick―’ 

He felt a implacable, disciplinary stare rake his stooped shoulders and, holding the waistband of his trousers, forced himself to meet it. He had at least two inches in height on Giles, but, on the other hand, this was the first time in his life he’d faced such an unblinking give-a-dog-enough-rope look from a man wearing nothing but Y-fronts. ‘I mean,’ he swallowed, ‘you puke in sympathy, don’t you?’ 

Giles held his gaze imperturbably; Patrick sensed, ridiculously, that he was about to pronounce some bizarre naval sentence, a stoppage of grog, or fourteen days’ cells. Flogging at the grate―feeling blood start to drain from his face and scalp, Patrick took a deep breath and steadied himself. 

‘Well spotted,’ Giles said, reaching for his pyjamas with one hand and shoving off his underpants with the other. For a moment, all Patrick’s conscious faculties were concentrated in _not looking_ , and for some few years after he and Nicola had ruefully called it a day, he would still wonder what might have happened just then, had he not been so scrupulous. He scrambled out of his trousers and tore at his socks, balling them hurriedly with his jumper and shoes at the foot of the mat. 

‘Not sure we need two pitilessly frank observers knocking about the shop, though,’ Giles added pleasantly, buttoning his pyjama top. Briefly indignant, Patrick recognised that his venturous manner had indeed been lifted from Selby’s, and in him seemed merely impertinent. ‘So I’d lay it off, sharpish. Doesn’t suit you. Good night.’ 

‘G’night.’ Patrick climbed trembling into the sleeping bag, leaving Giles, rippling in thunderous silk, a youthful Zeus or fair-haired Thor, to turn off the light. Listening to the bedsprings creak under Giles’s weight, there was only one thing on earth that Patrick wanted to do, and it was the very thing he couldn’t in a borrowed doss. Wishing he might at least mutter curses without being heard, he kicked, in a vicious passion of remorse and shame, at his nylon shroud.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem that Giles unexpectedly (?) alludes to is Frank O'Hara's ['Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]'](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/poem-lana-turner-has-collapsed).


End file.
